ROCKFORD — Most of the Rockford School District’s classrooms can’t be locked from the inside for security purposes but that will change when classes start this fall.

Parents and teachers have been raising concerns about it for about two years, and the district’s been addressing its widespread lack of locking devices for just as long, said district Chief Operating Officer Todd Schmidt.

The problem is teachers can’t really “lock down” when the school goes on lockdown, a safety procedure that’s supposed to protect teachers and students by keeping them locked in their classrooms.

Many of the district’s classroom door locks are located too high on the door to be compliant with federal disabilities guidelines. Those locks have been dismantled. In most classrooms, the best that teachers can do is close the door and cover the windows.

Then came December’s deadly shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. News reports indicate that some students and teachers who survived did so by hiding behind locked doors. Concerns about Rockford’s safety situation were raised once again, but still, no locks were installed.

That changes this week.

The district is getting ready to put a massive lock installation job out to bid. Before it does that, district employees will do one door to make sure bid specifications produce the right result.

Once that’s done — probably at Lathrop School, Schmidt said — he’ll take the bid to the School Board for permission to post the job.

“It’s just not as simple as swapping out the hardware or installing hardware. There was a lot more involved,” Schmidt said. “It’s not just one door. It’s 1,700 doors. The doors in each school are different. We want to bid it out, which means needing to get every detail right, or we might not end up with the work we wanted.”

To prepare the bid, district employees conducted a districtwide door audit, taking notes and photographs of each door style, which vary widely from building to building.

The district has about $1 million set aside for this project from life and safety bonds it sold a couple of years ago, Schmidt said. The project is expected to cost about that much.

School Board member Jude Makulec asked for an update on the project at a meeting last month. She said she was satisfied with the response.

School Board member Tim Rollins said he hopes parents and teachers understand that installing locks on every classroom door in the district is a far from simple task.

“If you rush the process, you might not get what you need,” Rollins said. “If you rush through the bid specification, you could end up overspending. Then, people will be upset about that.”